Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Official Report 732KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Monsignor John McIntyre of St Bridget’s parish, Baillieston.

Ladies and gentlemen, a few weeks ago, I had a very pleasant interruption to my normal work as a parish priest in Baillieston. I spent a few days at the Royal Scots College in Salamanca in Spain, giving talks about Scottish church history to five young men who were shortly to begin studies for the Roman Catholic priesthood at another Scots college, the Pontifical Scots College in Rome. I should say that both of those institutions for priestly training date away back to the 17th century. Because we have fewer candidates nowadays, I am afraid, the Salamanca college is used mostly for conferences and courses, but the work of priestly preparation goes on at the Roman college as it has done—apart from in a couple of gaps caused by Napoleon and Mussolini—for the past 400 years.

Five students from the whole of Scotland were going to Rome, which is a rather modest figure. What is more interesting is that only two of the five are Scots: one of the students is a young man from Ireland who came to study at a Scottish university, and the other two are from Poland and are recent immigrants to the north-east of Scotland.

The differences in the ethnic background and early experience of that group symbolise a changing Catholic Church in a changing Scottish nation. The two Polish names that will now be inscribed in the ancient Scots college register in Rome are part of a process of change that is to be seen in the older pages. In the first pages, there are Gordons, Macdonalds and Geddeses. Later on, in the 19th century, there are other names—McGettigans, O’Donnells and O’Briens. A generation or so later, there are Galettis, Buttis, Tedeschis, Contis and Tartaglias.

We Catholic Scots, therefore, ought to fit well into the increasingly multicultural society for which the Parliament makes laws. We have Indians, Filipinos and others in our congregations and numbers of young Muslims in our schools, and our folk memories should give us sympathy for those who seek a home here, even for economic reasons. I cannot forget that, in the 1870s, my grandfather saw nothing for a younger son on a very small Donegal farm and so took a pair of his father’s boots and slipped off one night to catch the boat for Glasgow, where he spent the rest of his working life.

Let us pray that our Parliament and people be distinguished—despite the burden of some ugly traditions, which we know about—by their respect for cultural elements old and new. That goes particularly for those Catholics among us who, like the Israelites in the Book of Exodus, are called to be kind to the stranger, because we were strangers once ourselves.

Before we come to the first debate, I inform the Parliament that I have agreed with the business managers that all votes from last Thursday’s business will be taken at decision time today. I remind members that cards have been put in every console—please do not remove them.